According to some critics, traditional armchair philosophical methodology relies in an illicit way on intuitions. But the particular structure of the critique is not often carefully articulated—a significant omission, since some of the critics’ arguments for skepticism about philosophy threaten to generalize to skepticism in general. More recently, some experimentalist critics have attempted to articulate a critique that is especially tailored to affect traditional methods, without generalizing too widely. Such critiques are more reasonable, and more worthy of serious consideration, than (...) are blunter critiques that generalize far too widely. I argue that a careful (empirical!) examination of extant philosophical practices shows that traditional philosophical methods can meet these more reasonable challenges. (shrink)

There are two clearly opposed camps on the issue of the source of linguistic intuitions that have been labelled competentionalist and ordinarist positions. Competentionalists believe and defend the view that linguistic intuitions have a special status and that linguistic competence is their source, while ordinarists believe and defend the view that linguistic intuitions do not have any special status and that they are not directly derived from linguistic competence. The crucial disagreement is primarily over the source of intuitions. The main (...) question that is addressed in this paper is: Which are the data that competence provides for linguistic intuitions? I try to show that all the criticism mounted against the ordinarist are ill-founded. Competence is not the source of linguistic intuitions. Intuitions do not flow directly from competence. They are the secondary reflections on primary performance. (shrink)

A central method within analytic philosophy has been to construct thought experiments in order to subject philosophical theories to intuitive evaluation. According to a widely held view, philosophical intuitions provide an evidential basis for arguments against such theories, thus rendering the discussion rational. This method has been the predominant way to approach theories formulated as conditional or biconditional statements. In this paper, we examine selected theories of musical expressivity presented in such logical forms, analyzing the possibilities for constructing thought experiments (...) against them. We will argue that philosophical intuitions are not available for the evaluation of the types of counterarguments that would need to be constructed. Instead, the evaluation of these theories, to the extent that it can succeed at all, will centrally rely on inferential, non-immediate access to our subjective musical experiences. Furthermore, attempted thought experiments lose their methodological function because no proper distinction can be drawn between the persons figuring in the thought-experimental scenario and the evaluator of the scenario. Consequently, some of the central contributions to what is generally understood to be analytic philosophy of art are shown to represent a form of aesthetic criticism, offering much less basis for rational argumentation than is often thought. (shrink)

In recent years, a significant amount of research has investigated the Vienna Circle’s ramifications. Otto Neurath has received much attention as one of the most prominent and energetic adherents, but less conspicuous philosophers now find themselves at the center of historical research. This article’s aim is to investigate Arne Naess’s connection to Logical Empiricism. Two crucial influences on Naess’s work are identified: Otto Neurath and the psychologist Egon Brunswik. This article’s most significant contributions are that, from the perspective of a (...) historian of philosophy of science, (a) Brunswik’s notion of “depth of intention” and his scientific methodological standards are reflected in Naess’s philosophy, (b) both Naess and Brunswik are adherents of Neurath’s physicalism, (c) Naess explicates Neurath’s notoriously vague concept of “congestions” in his “empirical semantics,” and (d) the latter is applied in Naess’s deep-ecology approach. (shrink)